Doctor Strange: 5 things to know about Marvel’s best-looking movie yet - Vox
Despite my complaints about Hollywood spending way too much time on comic book movies, I'll see this one because:
a. everyone likes Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton, don't they? Count me in, too.
b. articles talking about it seem to suggest there are quite a few jokes to be had. Marvel needs humour to be bearable;
c. movies that are noteworthy for unusual visual effects still have some appeal. Merely well done disaster scenarios, whether on a city or planet-wide scale, don't hold any interest, but this movie sounds more innovative than that.
5 comments:
and I will still watch it despite the fact that Dr Strange is my least favorite Marvel character. Don't like the fact that he introduces 'magic' into the MCU but hopefully they will be able to gloss over this with a sci-fi-ey explanation the way they did with Thor (though that Thor The Dark World movie was a bit of a stretch with elves piloting space ships)
Elves in space ships? Hobbits with lasers would only have improved Lord of the Rings.
Where do you stand on Tolkien, by the way? As you probably know, I couldn't get into the books, and after finding the first LOTR movie boring, couldn't be bothered with the rest.
I have watched the LOTR movies but only because my girlfriend is a fan and it has sufficiently good production values and battle scenes to make up for my not really being a fan of fantasy. So I've never read the books.
On the sci-fi vs fantasy divide I find it really difficult to get into fantasy, especially fantasy which involves 'magic' and the supernatural. There are exceptions. I love the Conan the Barbarian movies because the magic is pretty minimal and the emphasis is more on the rapine. Similarly with Game of Thrones which has the added benefit that I have independently evolved but also came across an interpretation of GOT as sci-fi based on the premise that humans have settled on new planets with slightly different (or maybe genetically engineered) flora and fauna and then forgotten their history and devolved into medievalism. Any fantasy that could fit into this internally consistent with science straitjacket is alright with me
That GOT interpretation sounds a real stretch.
Funny you mention the production values and battle scenes of LOTR - when my son has sometimes been watching them on TV, I have noted how the sort of murky, dusty fake light around the CGI battles which break any possible suspension of disbelief in my mind. (Not to mention the computer multiplied scores of thousands of participants.) Pretty much the same murky look turned up in one of the Star Wars prequels too; I forget which one, they were all forgettable.
It's odd though - in some movies, an obviously CGI created multitude doesn't bother me (I think the battles in the first two Narnia stories are good, for example, even if they feature animals - and I note they all take place in clear sunlight); in others it does. Obviously, my response to the material generally is likely playing a role; but I honestly think there is an aesthetic thing going too, with the general look of some intensely CGI movies just jarring with me too much. At which point I should mention 300, which I find impossible to take seriously because of its look, let alone anything else.
On the other hand, despite its high artifice, I quite liked Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - but the retrofuturistic look was all intended to be part of its charm...
LOTR movies not a patch on the novel whereas Harry Potter movies were great but I could not read the books at all.
elves with lasers!! gimme a break
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